Last night, all of a sudden, my laptop combo drive died on my in the middle of playing a dvd movie. It seems to have just stopped working right. When I put in any new cd or dvd, it doesnt sound like it spins up really fast and nothing shows up in the drive. I have tried reinstalling all the drivers... but the drive isnt even being detected in the bios and I cant boot from a winxp cd. Is this what happens when a drive dies... it just all of a sudden stops working... with no warning?

My mistake... I didn't specify... it isnt my harddrive thats having the problem, its actually the CD/DVD Rom combo drive. It's really weird cause windows still sees it and will eject the drive, but it just wont read anything and nothing I change with regards to software seems to help. As well, the fact that it isnt showing up in the bios is also quite discouraging... any other thoughts?

Have you tried cleaning the rubber tire that grabs and spins the disc??

I've fixed alot of non-working CD drives with the same symptoms as yours by just cleaning them. Same symptoms as yours usually- computer knows theres a drive there, but CDs are not recognized. On the CD drives and burners I've done this on, about 7 of 10 times it fixes it.

Use some kind of rubber roller cleaner preferrably, but you can use something like isopropyl alcohol if its all you have. Take a Q tip with the cleaner and just clean the circle rubber tire. :bigsmile: Sometimes it can work wonders, the tire needs to be grippy, or it cant spin the CD properly.

You can also try to clean the lens as well, but only use a dry Q tip, on the first try at least, and be VERY VERY gentle with it.

Just a suggestion anyway, another possibility is that the drive is kaput like these guys said.

Oh sorry, I didn't see that you said even the bios can't see it, cleaning isn't the answer.